Joe Lansdale - The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

I had a vision of shoving those circus tickets down her throat, but I restrained myself for Jasmine’s sake. “No joke? Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Eight o’clock sharp. Go stacking ‘em after nine, gets so hot in here you’ll faint. A Yankee visiting some relatives came in here and did just that. Found him about closing time over there by the historicals and the Gothic Romances. Had to call an ambulance to come get him. Got out of here with one of my Gothics clutched in his hand. Didn’t pay me a cent for it.”

“And people think a job like this is pretty easy.”

“They just don’t know,” Martha said.

I said thanks and goodbye and started to turn away.

“Hey,” Martha said. “You decide to get your name changed, they’ll do stuff like that for you over at the court house.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

I didn’t want any more of Martha, so I went over to the drug store and used the payphone there and called Jasmine. Her mother answered.

“Hi, Connie,” I said.

“Get a job yet?”

“No,” I said. “But I’m closing in on some prospects.”

“Bet you are. What do you want?”

“Jasmine in?”

“You want to talk to her?”

No, I thought. Just ask for the hell of it. But I said, “If I may.”

The phone clattered on something hard, a little more violently than necessary, I thought. A moment later Jasmine came on the line. “Daddy.”

“Hi, Baby Darling. Want to go to the circus?”

“The circus?”

“The Jim Dandy Circus is in town, and I’ve got tickets.”

“Yeah. Really.” She sounded as if I’d asked her if she wanted to have her teeth cleaned.

“You used to like the circuses.”

“When I was ten.”

“That was just seven years ago.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Only when you’re seventeen. Want to go or not? I’ll even spring for a hot dog.”

“You know what they make hot dogs out of?”

“I try not to think about it. I figure I get some chili on it, whatever’s in the dog dies.”

“Guess you want me to come by and get you?”

“That would be nice. Circus starts at three. That’s less than an hour away.”

“All right, but Daddy?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t call me Baby Darling in public. Someone could hear.”

“We can’t have that.”

“Really, Daddy. I’m getting to be a woman now. It’s… I don’t know… kind of…”

“Hokey?”

“That’s it.”

“Gottcha.”

The circus was not under the big top, but was inside the Mud Creek Exhibition center, which Mud Creek needs about as much as I need a second dick. I don’t use the first one as it is. Oh, I pee out of it, but you know what I mean.

The circus was weak from the start, but Jasmine seemed to have a pretty good time, even if the performing bears were so goddamned old I thought we were going to have to go down there and help them out of their cages. The tiger act was scary, because it looked as if the tigers were definitely in control, but the overweight Ringmaster got out alive, and the elephants came on, so old and wrinkled they looked like drunks in baggy pants. That was the best of it. After that, the dog act, conducted by Waldo the Great, got out of hand, and his performing poodles went X-rated, and the real doo-doo hit the fan.

Idiot trainer had apparently put one of the bitches to work while she was in heat, and in response, the male dogs jumped her and started poking, the biggest male finally winning the honors and the other five running about as if their brains had rolled out of their ears.

Waldo the Great went a little nuts and started kicking the fornicating dogs, but they wouldn’t let up. The male dog kept his goober in the slot even when Waldo’s kicks made his hind legs leave the ground. He didn’t even yip.

I heard a kid behind us say, “Mommy, what are the puppies doing?”

And Mommy, not missing a beat, said, “They’re doing a trick, dear.”

Children were screaming. Waldo began kicking at the remaining dogs indiscriminately, and they darted for cover. Members of the circus rushed Waldo the Great. There were disappointed and injured dogs hunching and yipping all over the place. Waldo went back to the horny male and tried once more to discourage him. He really put the boot to him, but the ole boy really hung in there. I was kind of proud of him. One of the other dogs, innocent, except for confusion, and a gyrating ass and a dick like a rolled-back lipstick tube, made an error in geography and humped air past Waldo and got a kick in the ass for it.

He sailed way up and into the bleachers, went so high his fleas should have served cocktails and dinner on him. Came down like a bomb, hit between a crack in the bleachers with a yip. I didn’t see him come out from under there. He didn’t yip again.

The little boy behind me, said, “Is that a trick too?”

“Yes,” Mommy said. “It doesn’t hurt him. He knows how to land.”

I certainly hoped so.

Not everyone took it as casually as Mommy. Some dog lovers came out of the bleachers and there was a fight. Couple of cowboys started trying to do to Waldo what he had done to the poodles.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, so to speak, the two amorous mutts were still at it, the male laying pipe like there was no tomorrow.

Yes sir, a pleasant afternoon trip to the circus with my daughter. Another debacle. It was merely typical of the luck I had been experiencing. Even a free ticket to the circus could turn to shit.

Jasmine and I left while a cowboy down from the bleachers was using Waldo the Great as a punching bag. One of the ungrateful poodles was biting the cowboy on the boot.

Me and Jasmine didn’t have hot dogs. We ended up at a Mexican place, and Jasmine paid for it. Halfway through the meal Jasmine looked up at me and frowned.

“Daddy, I can always count on you for a good time.”

“Hey,” I said, “what were you expecting for free tickets? Goddamn Ringling Brothers?”

“Really, Daddy. I enjoyed it. Weirdness follows you around. At Mom’s there isn’t anything to do but watch television, and Mom and Gerald always go to bed about nine o’clock, so they’re no fun.”

“I guess not,” I said, thinking nine o’clock was awful early to be sleepy. I hoped the sonofabitch gave her the clap.

After dinner, Jasmine dropped me off and next morning I went down to Martha’s and she grunted at me and showed me the Harlequins and where they needed to go, in alphabetical order, so I started in placing them. After about an hour of that, it got hot and I had to stop and talk Martha into letting me go over to the drugstore and buy a Coke.

When I came back with it, there was a guy in there with a box of Harlequin Romances. He was tall and lean and not bad-looking, except that he had one of those little pencil-line mustaches that looked as if he’d missed a spot shaving or had a stain line from sipping chocolate milk. Except for a black eye, his face was oddly unlined, as if little that happened to him in life found representation there. I thought he looked familiar. A moment later, it came to me. He was the guy at the circus with the performing dogs. I hadn’t recognized him without his gold lamé tights. I could picture him clearly now, his foot up in the air, a poodle being launched from it. Waldo the Great.

He had a box of books on the desk in front of Martha. All Harlequin Romances. He reached out and ran his fingers over the spines. “I really hate to get rid of these,” he was saying to Martha, and his voice was as sweet as a cooing turtle dove. “Really hate it, but see, I’m currently unemployed and extra finances, even of a small nature, are needed, and considering all the books I read, well, they’re outgrowing my trailer. I tell you, it hurts me to dispense with these. Just seeing them on my shelves cheers me… Oh, I take these books so to heart. If life could be like these, oh what a life that would be. But somebody always messes it up.” He touched the books. “True love. Romance. Happy endings. Oh, it should be that way, you know. We live such a miserable existence. We —”